Sunday, 20 April 2014

Excerpt from my MA in Education The Education Research Project- The role of social media in enhancing learning and teaching

According to Conole in Moore (2013:6), social media
has the potential to free us from constrains of transmission teaching. Moore
points out that social media are nimble, flexible, easy to use, and often very
powerful. They continually develop. Students can participate easily and create
own learning spaces. Dewey in Moore (2013:6) recognised the importance of these
approaches a century ago and stated that;

‘There should be more conjoint activities in
which those instructed take part so that they may acquire a social sense of
their own powers and of the materials and appliances used.’

Social Media platforms put the students and learning
in the centre rather than the teacher.

“If used
correctly social media can many
benefits of using social media in education.” Moore says (2013:6). For
students breaking up the material, identifying patterns and putting all back
together to create a new or different meaning are the key features of higher
cognition. Social media is good for teaching students about the issues of
authority, legitimacy and authenticity on the web, and also encourages the
judgement skills. Properly designed tasks support the traditional literacy and
numeracy through the generation of text and arithmetic based teaching and
learning episodes. Using social media teaches students to decode and interpret
visual material. Social media can also be used to teach the role of media in
shaping our society and culture. Through social media students learn how to
create usernames, upload images, manage a profile and perform other basic
functions on the internet (2013:7)

One important benefit of using social media is to
teach students how to behave appropriately on-line (2013:8). I think this is a
significant benefit to all students for they spend majority of their free time
on-line according to case studies questionnaires and focus group
interview.

Social media is good for classroom management as
well. The ones which have ‘wall’ functions (Home for Facebook and Timeline for
Twitter etc.) provides teachers feedback opportunities to students. There are
also archive and search facilities which allow teachers to intervene or track
students’ work. Social media users do not have to be at school to communicate
about their work. It saves time and cost for travelling. All parents who have
internet access can easily reach teachers to learn about their children’s
progress or to ask about any issues they want to know. Students can also submit
their work through internet which saves the cost of printing out or handing in
paper-based work (2013:9).

In ‘Social Networking for Schools’, Baule and Lewis
stated that ‘Social networking’ builds collaboration skills that students will
need in the work places. Students are enthusiastic about these technologies and
schools should capitalize on that (2012:9). According to these writers education
should embrace new methods and tools in order to continue to compete in a much
smaller world. The book’s aim is to provide the reader with a basic
understanding of existing and emerging social networking services and how they
can be harnessed to assist schools. They
state that social networks are the fastest growing part of the economy. If
schools ignore the impact they would go against the premises of education’s
role which is to prepare students for the society. Social networks also allow
members to communicate effectively throughout the electronic global environment
(2012:9). There is an unintended
consequence of social network use by students; it breaks down the barriers
among school cliques. Majority of students seem to be more willing to work with
others outside of their normal social circles online (2012:11).

Summary

In this chapter I tried to explain ‘The Social Media
and its use’, ‘Issues around Social Media’, ‘Overview of the Social Media Tools’
and ‘The Role of Social Media enhancing learning and teaching’.

All the writers and researchers in my dissertation agree
that if used appropriately, Social Media is a very useful educational tool. It
is important to be aware of the risks and take precautions in order to minimise
the danger. Poore believes in using digital technology will enhance learning
and teaching.

Social Media was born around 2005 through evolution of the
Internet and the next generation of the web called Web 2.0 (2013: 4). Baule and
Lewis stated Social Media as “the assembly, or coming together of individuals
in specific groups or communities “linking people to each other in some way.
Social networking sites bring people together who people interested in a
particular subject.” (2012:2). Bosman and. Zagenczyk in White, King, Tsang state
that ‘Social Media’ is a widespread
phenomenon focused on connecting, sharing and collaborating(2011:3). They think that Social
Networking is a very important portion of the world and schools need to
instruct students on how to use social networks safely.

Department for children, schools and families has
prepared two guidance booklets called Cyberbullying (Supporting school staff:
Appendix 3) and Cyberbullying (A whole-school community issue: Appendix 4) (http://www.digizen.org/downloads/cyberbullying_teachers.pdf)
that explains teachers about how to deal with Cyberbullying. It has been
written by Childnet International for schools.

When using social media, it is important to check
the privacy features and understand how to protect your posts. In all the
web-sites above, they have clear explanations of how to send a post public or
private. . It is also a good idea to use a good on-line anti-virus programme
and do regular scans against spammers and viruses.

There are 3 types of copyrights and IP (intellectual
property), they are; institutional copyright and IP ownership, student
copyright and IP ownership and third party copyright and IP ownership. You need
to make sure that you know the content of the rights you hold in terms of
copyright, and intellectual property; make sure you understand the Terms of
Service that you are signing up for and its implications; have approval for
posting content over which your institution holds; and speak to member of your
school executive or legal expert if you have any queries. Otherwise you may be
stripped or neutralise infringing content from the site (Poore, 2013: 203). You
should be careful to choose a service that does not require students to hand
over their copyright or IP to that service when they sign up. If you want to
use third party material, it is necessary that you check for the copyright and
IP issues. You may need to obtain permission from the copyright owner to use
the material on your site. If not you are likely to bear some form of
consequences. It is important to ensure your copyright and IP, as well.

The main social media sites available and includes:
blogs, wikis, social networking (FaceBook or Bebo) and podcasts. There are also
visual media such as; Video sharing (YouTube, Vimeo and DailyMotion),
Photosharing (Flickr, Instagram, Photobucket), and Slideshows (Slideshare.net,
Prezi.com), animations and comicstrips.

Twitter is one of the social media tools which
allows people to compose short, frequent messages or ‘tweets’ up to 140
characters that are distributed by the Twitter network on the internet. You can
follow and invite others, set up lists, send photos and Direct Messages (DMs).
Because there are millions of tweets sent each day, to help people find them,
members use hash (#) to tag the tweets about a specific topic. If many tweets
take the same hashtag, then it is ‘trending’ (TT: Twitter trend). (Poore, 2013:
124-125)

A wiki can be
public or private, or on any topic. They are normally created by groups not by
individuals. Wikipedia is the most famous example of Wikis. People can
contribute to articles by editing or creating articles on any topic. However
there are other wikis out there as well.

Facebook is funded by Mark Zuckerberg. This is how
they describe their mission: ‘Facebook's mission is to give people
the power to share and make the world more open and connected.’ The users feel that they have
control over the sites and features, and they use the tools such as; ‘like’,
‘share’ and ‘comment’.

One of the most used Social Media sites is YouTube.
It is excellent to find short clips about the topics we do in class such as:
writing CVs, pollution, nature, bullying, PE, music etc. Others are Vimeo,
Daily Motion and Vine. Photo sharing websites are Flickr, Instagram, and
Photobucket. Slideshow and Prezi are the two of the websites that you can share
your slideshows on-line. Animations and
Comicstrips are other websites to use to create characters and tell stories
using these characters.

Possibilities are endless but I have chosen the ones
I have used or I am familiar with. Digital world keeps reinventing itself and
it is quite difficult for teachers to keep up with all the latest gadgets.